Podcast #63: Damien Echols on Hope and Death Row

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Damien Echols spent eighteen years on death row before being released. His book Life After Death recounts his story about upending the ruling that threatened to end his life, and he has also worked with Peter Jackson on the film West  of Memphis. We were fortunate to have him at LIVE from the NYPL in conversation with musician and actor Henry Rollins. The two spoke about life in prison, hope, and writing.

Although Echols spent almost two decades on death row, he explains that it's nearly impossible to ever adjust to prison life:

"I was in prison probably five years before I started to really come out of that fight-or-flight response and to be able to function even semi rationally as a human being anymore. Five years it took. But even then, that’s not a one time thing either. You know, to take it in, for it to become the new normal is also a process. Because the horror and the atrocities and everything else you see keep building. In the beginning you’re dealing with things like the food they’re feeding you. Just how horrendous that is, or the conditions you’re living in, the bugs, the rats, the heat, whatever it is. As soon as you start getting used to that, then they start executing people, so it’s always like there’s a horror, a next horror that comes along that’s a little bigger than the last one, so you never really get used to it."

After receiving the death sentence, Echols could neither entirely harbor hope nor fall into hopelessness. Instead, he was able to tamp down the extremity of his emotions to cope with the unthinkable punishment he had been handed:

"I think what sort of starts to happen at first, is it’s almost like you’re on a roller coaster. You know, every time something comes up, you know, for example, say DNA testing comes in. Or a new eyewitness comes forth or somebody comes up and says, 'I lied on the stand. I want to tell the truth now.' You start thinking, 'Okay, this is it, I’m finally going home. Surely now when somebody sees the absurdity of this, surely someone is going to step in and do something about it.' But they don’t. Something happens and another year goes by, another two years go by, and eventually it gets to the point where I would call home and Lorri would tell me about some huge development in the case, and I would say, 'oh okay,' and then I would go back to reading, because it gets to the point it burns you out inside, it’s almost like living in an adrenaline rush. And you have to let go of it, you have to move beyond it, it is, that’s what it is. It’s going beyond hope and hopelessness. If you live in this constant state of hope, you’re wasting your days. You’re wasting the time that you have there alive. Maybe a day’s going to come when you’re going to be outside again. Maybe it’s not, maybe they’re going to kill you. But if you spend every single moment looking toward the future, then you don’t enjoy what you do have. The hopelessness, you have to move beyond that, too."

During his time in prison, Echols wrote as a way of maintaining possession of his memories. He describes writing as a way of treasuring:

"By the time I got out I remembered that pizza had been my favorite food, but I couldn’t remember what it tasted like anymore. And there were so many other things that I was scared to death of losing. The only thing I had that I cherished that I wanted to hold on to were the years before I came to prison. So I would write those out and just think about the tiniest detail to keep from losing it. You know, for example, the way the doorknob of my grandmother’s front door would feel on a cold winter day when I would put my hand on it, and I would write that out, almost to engrave it in my brain to keep from losing it... I would write about all these different things and do it over and over and over again because it was all I had. You know, it was almost like taking out your most valued possessions and then turning them over and over."

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